“So then, how is this the house Renn built?” Max asked.
We were filing down the corridors of what seemed to be a technical university. Classrooms lined both sides of the hall, filled with young people (actually, only a little younger than me, I guess, but they hadn’t had my life), expensive computer-aided whiteboards, chairs and floor mats-lotus-style seemed to be all the rage. One of the doors opened as we passed and the sucking sound said the room was airtight and soundproofed, even though there didn’t seem to be much sound to muffle.
“When you burst in on Alan and me,” Avery reminisced to Max, “the first time, years ago, you said you were Renn and I remember the terror I felt in that moment. I checked later and found that Alan felt it too. And what hit me just the next day, when I thought back on it, was that the fear was there before I even remembered who Renn was. You were a footnote in intelligence reports, the great missing Soviet asset and there were rumblings you’d been sighted but there were always rumblings. So you weren’t the first thing on my mind yet the fear was just overpowering.
“When I sat in on your debriefing, you talked about how you did it-how anytime someone came across your name, even just on paper, you could send a shock of fear at a distance, without them knowing you were doing it, without you even knowing you were doing it.”
“It can be useful,” Max nodded, “to make an adversary afraid of you before you face him.”
“Well, when I figured out my calling,” Avery said, “I went looking for you. This was after 9/11, after you’d gone missing and no one could find you.” He turned and smiled at Volkov. “But I put the word out in the right places, apparently. One day, Pietr walked up to me on the street and said, ‘I know what you’re looking for and why you can’t find it.’”
“He wanted an army of mindbenders!” Volkov smiled. “Like we live on every block, Max-imagine!”
“Well, it’s what we have now,” Avery insisted and you could hear the pride in his voice.
“Feeble-minded ones,” Max grumbled and Volkov shrugged.
“Feeble-minded ones are easier to use,” he said. “And, the truth is, they’re all we need.”
We were passing another classroom door. I moved closer to the wall, where I could get a glimpse inside as we passed. The teacher was up front, monitoring the class though nobody was doing much of anything-the group of them eyes closed, palms up, humming like cats on a windowsill. The whiteboard up front read:
20 Minutes
40.02588N, 105.24102 W
Everything I’ve Ever Built Is In Danger; Who Will Protect Me?
The Borgen Takeover Bid Makes Good Business Sense
“This is where Jim is a genius,” Volkov said and Avery smiled modestly, a man who’d won the game and was now above praise. “He realized what was needed.”
Max’s forehead looked like a topographical map all of a sudden. It must have been a weird experience for him, having to guess at answers. “What? Feeble minds? How can these shallow ones read anybody reliably?”
“The mistake,” Avery said quietly, “is in the terminology: mindreader. The important skill for business isn’t reading people’s minds-it’s the other side of the equation, influencing the thoughts of others. That’s worth money. Lots of money.”
We passed another classroom. The whiteboard read:
20 Minutes
53N25, 2W55
Who Can I Turn to when No One Cares?
Labour is Still Better for the Working Man
Avery led us through an open door into an empty classroom. You could see it had done its duty recently-coffee cups and notepads were scattered across tables pushed out to odd angles to leave room for squatting on floor mats. The whiteboard was partly but not completely erased. What remained was:
20 mi
3 5’ 19.1” N, 122 05’ W
othing Lasts Forev he Royal Fam Provides Stabil
“I explained to Jim how few prime talents there were,” Volkov shrugged. “But, the more we talked, the more I realized that what he wanted to do didn’t require real power. Twenty or thirty drones at a time could do the job. And better maybe, since they can attack a multitude of frequencies at the same time.”
“So when people walk out of my seminars feeling better, really hopeful, liberated, inspired, fearless, at a time when the world is going down the crapper,” Avery added with real enthusiasm, “what’s that worth? All through the seminars, we’re sending them the message: You Are Special. Others May Fail but You Won’t. You Can Do It. We clear away the roadblocks inside, which are the ones that really bite, don’t you agree?
“At the same time, we’ve offered our more practical services for hire. That has proved to be very profitable.”
“Influencing votes in Congress,” Max murmured, without sounding very distressed.
Volkov looked almost condescending. “Your thinking is outmoded, Max,” he said, shaking his head. “Government is not even a player anymore.”
“Everything is business now,” Avery interrupted. “Government, Media, Religion-it’s all business, competing for attention, for mindshare. Most of our work is influencing consumer attitudes and spending, stockholder’s meetings, Nielsen ratings, neutralizing or misleading competitors, cerebral placement for new products-”
“Cerebral placement?” Max said.
Avery shrugged. “It’s the marketing buzzword,” he said. “There’s a section of the brain, the-” He clicked his fingers a few times.
“Orbitofrontal cortex,” Volkov interjected.
“-Right. If you plant a product suggestion there, you’re home free. That part of the brain just bypasses all rational judgment or vetting. It’s an automatic purchase. Saves an incredible amount of money in advertising and PR.”
“And you’re telling me that’s funding this whole enterprise?” Max said and the skepticism in his voice seemed to set something off in Avery.
“I don’t think you realize the scope of what we’re doing. Remember five years ago, when the analysts started saying real estate had peaked, that it was a bubble about to burst? That anybody who got in after that was going to get killed? Yet people kept buying-adjustable-rate mortgages that were built to explode, right? You think that just happened?”
Avery was up and pacing around now, feeding on his own pitchman energy. “SUV’s-they drive like trucks but they go off-road. Except that almost none of their drivers ever even bother. They get half the gas mileage of cars. Gas went from $1.50 to $3.50 a gallon in less than three years and sales of SUV’s kept growing-at twice the profit margin of cars. You think that was an accident?” He had abandoned his composure now and was waving his arms around like a traffic cop.
“Think of the power, Max, to show a client you can move an entire marketplace like that! We started with a staff of five and twenty part-time drones. Now we have over five thousand in forty locations. Geneva and Shanghai open in the next two months.”
“But you haven’t mentioned the most creative part of your work,” Max said, in a light tone that didn’t sound like him. “Making nuclear plants malfunction and the Mayor of Copenhagen bark like a dog in front of witnesses.”
Avery’s smile didn’t waver but he glanced at Volkov, who responded quickly. “A child’s tricks,” he said. “We used to change the instrument needles in the lab from a half mile away, Maximka, just for fun. You remember.” Max nodded, though there was no nostalgia on his face. “There was no real harm done.”
“I don’t think we had anything to do with the Mayor of Copenhagen,” Avery mused. “At least none that I know of.”
“Well, let’s just say you benefit from instability anywhere in the world,” Max offered. “When people doubt their officials, utilities, religion, the institutions that make them feel safe, that’s an opportunity for the OPEC of Hope.”
“A lot of what’s unfortunate in the world,” Avery answered, “is fortunate for us.” He shrugged. ”The world is filled with misfortune. That only shows how much we’re needed.”